Bono wants the next U2 album to sound like AC/DC
Bono has been making the rounds as of late promoting his recent memoir, SURRENDER: 40 Songs, One Story. The U2 frontman has turned the first leg of his promotion into a bit of an apology tour, especially after The Guardian posted an excerpt from the book where Bono blames himself for the global release of the band’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence that was controversially downloaded onto every iTunes account.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Bono explained how, despite the snafu surrounding the album’s release, he remains proud of Songs of Innocence and its follow-up, 2017’s Songs of Experience.
“I know now that with youth culture, I am kind of tolerated hanging out at the back of the birthday party, but the magic show’s going on down here for the kids. I wished to connect with the pop charts over the last two albums and failed. But the songwriting got really good. Songs of Experience is great songwriting even if you don’t like the sound of it. Or ‘Every Breaking Wave’ or ‘The Troubles’ on ‘Songs of Innocence.’ I would have loved to have a pop song on the radio.
“Probably we’ve run a road on that,” he admits. “So right now, I want to write the most unforgiving, obnoxious, defiant, fuck-off-to-the-pop-charts rock ‘n’ roll song that we’ve ever made. I spoke to Edge about it this week. He’s going, ‘Is it that call again?’ ‘What call?’ ‘The one about we’re going to write the big fuck-off rock song?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, it’s our job!’ We can make songs famous now, but I don’t think U2 can make them hits.”
In case you’ve missed it, pretty much every U2 album has had some kind of big nasty power-chord-heavy song that Bono insists is a “fuck off” track. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb has ‘Vertigo’, which was, in fact, quite a big hit; No Line on the Horizon had ‘Get On Your Boots’, which was less so; I guess Songs of Innocence had ‘Volcano’, but that doesn’t exactly fit; and Songs of Experience had the Kendrick Lamar feature ‘American Soul’.
“In among that unreasonableness, it is likely that I will put the part of me, the anger that hasn’t been managed, to good use. While I am, with this book, trying to make peace with myself and my maker, I have no intentions of making peace with the world,” Bono added. “That’s not on the agenda. I like to think I have the freedom to be whatever I want. My anger at inequality became focused on a community far away from home. You know, you have to pick your fights.”
Apparently, now, that fight includes releasing a big, loud, “fuck off” type of rock and roll album. That doesn’t quite gel with Bono’s other revelation: that the long-teased Songs of Ascent is nearly done. Even though it’s almost ready to go, Bono implied that Ascent will have to wait until he’s off his “fuck off” mentality.
“We all make mistakes. The progressive-rock virus gets in, and we needed a vaccine,” he says. “The discipline of our songwriting, the thing that made U2 — top-line melody, clear thoughts — had gone. With the band, I was like, this is not what we do, and we can only do that experimental stuff if we have the songwriting chops.”
“So we went to songwriting school, and we’re back and we’re good! Over those two albums, Songs Of Innocence and Experience, our songwriting returned. Now we need to put the firepower of rock ‘n’ roll back,” Bono ended by saying. “I don’t know who is going to make our fuck-off rock ‘n’ roll album. You almost want an AC/DC, you want Mutt Lange. The approach. The discipline. The songwriting discipline. That’s what we want.”
So stay tuned for U2’s “fuck off” album, whenever that surfaces. Until then, just enjoy ‘Vertigo’ like the rest of us.
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